Tooling by Design
Hole Extrusions--Part 1
Some people incorrectly refer to deep-drawn hole-tapping features as extrusions. The deep-drawn features are produced by gathering a predetermined volume of material into a bubble, then incrementally reducing the outside diameter while simultaneously increasing the wall height through multiple redraw stations. Depending on the process design, deep-drawn features can have wall thicknesses that are less than, equal to or greater than the original sheetmetal thickness. They also can achieve greater wall heights than possible with hole extrusions.
Hole extrusions start with a punched hole in a flat surface of the sheetmetal. Then an extruding punch expands the hole to the required ID, usually in one hit. The extrusion wall height is the result of the punched hole diameter, the edge quality of the punched hole, the diameter of the extrusion and the amount of allowable wall thinning.
Consider, for example, a hole extrusion designed as a bearing hub in a 3.0-mm-thick part (Fig. 1). The product designer requires an 8.2-mm ID and a minimum wall thickness of 1.5 mm., with a minimum 3.0-mm extrusion height (h). Is it possible?
Using the constancy-of-volume rule, calculate the volume of material (VM) available to work with:
VM =[(½ A)2 - (½ B)2] π t, where:
A, inside diameter of the extrusion; B, punched hole diameter; t, material thickness.
Assuming the smallest possible hole diameter that can be punched in the workpiece is equal to the material thickness:
VM = [(8.2/2)2 - (3.0/2)2] π3.0
= 137.225 mm3
To determine the volume of the extrusion (VE), we treat this as a cylinder with open ends and a constant wall thickness:
VE = [(½ D)2 - (½ A)2] πh
The outside diameter of the extrusion (D) is equal to the inside diameter plus two-times the wall thickness, or 11.2 mm. The desired height (h) of the extrusion is 3.0 mm.
VE = [(11.2/2)2 - (8.2/2)2] π 3.0
= 137.131 mm3
If VM > VE, there is enough material volume to form the extrusion. In this case, VM slightly exceeds VE, so the height of the extrusion can be made greater than 3.0 mm. If the resulting extrusion height were too high, simply reduce VM by increasing the diameter of the punched hole.
If the amount of stretching required to form the hole extrusion exceeds the residual stretchability of the cut edge after punching, consider of one several options available for restoring edge stretchability:
• Improve the quality of the original cutting operation;
• An additional cut of higher quality; or
• A shaved cut and deburred break edge.Next month I’ll present some proven hole-punching methods and extrusion-punch designs for forming extruded holes in sheetmetal stampings. MF
Related Enterprise Zones: Tool & Die
some body has a better way to do extrusion crenly I change the process to this prehole coining, preform to releae some material tension and final etruson that means 4 steps to do the right extrusion. it is so disgusting when QUALITY do not approve the run because extrution with bad shape, sepcifcation and you need put down your die.
A good article n how to make the right extrusion on sheet metal. as you know extrusion are the most problematic items to get approval right there on the puch press and few parts has more than 5 extrusion hard to keep them perfect and wihout breaks/ fissure on the crown